About
My name is Michelle but my friends call me Mitch. I live in New York City. These are my adventures (and boring weekday evenings) in home cooking.Find
I’ve posted about oatmeal in the past, but this topic deserves an update. I’ve done savory oatmeal here and there, but my favorite is still my (almost) weekly bowl of steel-cut oats with fresh fruit. My current combination of toppings is a spoonful of almond butter, some plain yogurt, apples or pears cooked in brown sugar and cinnamon, and a big drizzle of maple syrup. Delicious enough to get me out of bed on chilly mornings.
This granola is fantastic and I will probably make it over and over, especially because the recipe is easy and so very straightforward. It’s unconventionally salty and crisps up in olive oil instead of butter, but I eat it in the most conventional of ways: sprinkled heavy handedly on top of plain yogurt or shoved straight into my mouth by the fistful. I never thought I’d say this about something as… granola as granola, but this stuff has upgraded my weekday breakfasts to something a little more alluring than usual.
Continuing my baking spree… That first yogurt cake I made was great and all, but I wanted to revise it into something less spongy, less greasy, and more breakfasty. I wanted it to be something I could eat with hot coffee during class, without getting translucent oily-finger spots all over my notes. (Or in transit without greasing up the handrails because I am a train pig occasionally.)
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 cup plain yogurt
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup neutral oil such as canola or grapeseed
sliced almonds and sugar, for topping
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter an 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch loaf pan.
Combine flours, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl. In a small bowl, beat eggs then add sugar, yogurt, and extracts. Mix in oil. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix gently just until batter is completely moistened. Pour into pan and sprinkle sugar and sliced almonds on top. Bake for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean and the top of the cake is lightly browned.
One glimpse at this recipe and I knew I had to try it. Are these cookies supposed to be eaten for dessert? Breakfast? Late-night snack?
Who cares, they’re delicious. I want to start carrying them around in my pockets so I can eat them whenever I want.
A few notes: I didn’t peel the apples and I finely chopped them instead of grating them. I ran out of golden raisins so I added dried cranberries. Chill the dough before baking to get chewy, tall cookies. Best when fresh and gooey and crisp on the outside, in my opinion.
Eggs on pizza can be a very good thing, as I learned at ABC Kitchen a few months ago while devouring brunch (mushroom and oregano pizza with a runny egg plopped in the center). I had also seen this and this. I let egg yolks run all over so many of my meals on a regular basis, so why not pizza too? I finally did one lazy and hazy weekday morning sometime during the lull between the end of my summer class and the beginning of a trip to the West coast. It may also become a de facto dinner pizza.
Adding the egg(s) is basically the very last step before you shut the over door if you’re gonna do this. It helps to make some kind of nest out of cheese or vegetables to hold the egg in (as you can see in the photo above, I should’ve formed some kind of tomato barricade). It also helps to crack the egg into a small ramekin or juice glass or something, then carefully dump it on top of the pizza. Bake the pizza as you normally would. The egg yolk should stay runny.
Like cake salé, yogurt cake is a homey baked good from France that comes in a loaf pan. No waiting for butter to soften, no need to plug in any mixers, and all you need to start are everyday ingredients (which you can then add to, according to whatever else is spilling out of your fridge and pantry).
I used this recipe from Bon Appétit, minus the glaze and with half as much sugar (it was still sweet enough for me), plus about a cup of chopped fresh plums and a few sprigs’ worth of fresh thyme folded into the batter at the very end.
Lazy weekends are meant for baking sweet things for breakfast while sipping hot coffee and catching up on music podcasts. I found this recipe on 101 Cookbooks (an ever-reliable source for healthy-but-not-boring food). The muffins are sweet but not too sweet, and you can add whatever fruits (dried or otherwise) and nuts you’d like. I halved the recipe and gently folded in about a 1/2 cup of chopped fresh, tart-sweet apricots (4-5 small apricots) at the very end. The muffins ended up being very moist (even though I used a little bit less yogurt), so next time I might try tossing the fruit pieces with a bit of flour before mixing them into the batter.
I usually eat fresh fruit with nothing more than a good rinse under cold water. Good for my reputation as a Healthy Person (stop snickering, those of you who have ever watched me exercise) and nutritionist, but if that was all I ever did it would make for a pretty boring food blog. So sometimes I combine very photogenic seasonal fruit with things like alcohol, fat, and sugar.
Strawberry Ginger Fizzy Drink
If you’re not the most super-careful person (like me), a few strawberries are bound to tumble out of the basket (ok fine, or maybe the whole basket will turn upside down because you couldn’t tell where the bottom of the reusable bag was) in transit. Simple fix: when you get home, take these and other smooshed berries, slice them, lightly muddle them in a glass, then pour vodka and ginger ale over them. You’ll feel better about the red stains on everything in no time. Another excellent option: pour beer over the muddled strawberries.
Strawberry Shortcake
For breakfast, not dessert. I mean, it’s biscuits with fruit… why not? All you have to do is whip out your favorite biscuit recipe and spoon macerated strawberries (cut-up berries that have been softened by a sprinkling of sugar) and whipped cream, crème fraiche, or Greek yogurt (like I did for breakfast) on top. If you’re going the dessert route, you can also top it off with ice cream or make a dessert sandwich.
Sfoglia’s Strawberry Spaghetti
Strawberry pasta sauce sounds strange, I know, but there’s a reason this thing has become a signature dish at a reputable New York City Italian restaurant. The recipe is here. I can see little kids liking it too. Good ingredients go a long way in this simple dish, so use the best stuff you can get your hands on. I busted out the expensive olive oil to finish it.
